All I Ever Needed
by VallieValVal
Summary: Isabella Swan has the perfect life. The boyfriend she's grown up with, her two best friends, the Ivy League College. Just when everything is right, something is bound to go wrong. AH/AU. One-shot.


**Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Twilight (which is owned by Summit and Ms. Meyer)**

**Some of the lines in this are adapted from Twilight and some ideas are kinda the same as Twilight, too :)**

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Edward and I met at a playground when we were three. Our parents were long lost friends from College who had just discovered they were living in the same small town, Forks, on the same street, after years separate.

We were chucked together for everything. Days to the beach would be organized by Charlie, while extravagant vacations would be organized by Carlisle. Esme would re-design our bedrooms every year, and Renee was our teacher in kindergarten and the first two years of school.

We were each others' best friends. Edward came to me when other boys would pick on him for his height and strange hair colour. I came crying to him when I fell over due to my clumsiness.

When we got to high school, I had a growth spurt over the summer, and boys were suddenly fascinated with me. I could not see why they would be interested with me, I was plain. I had brown hair, brown eyes. I wasn't a nerd and I wasn't a cheerleader. I wasn't tall and I wasn't short. I was average. Edward would thankfully ward off any boys that got close to touching me, and when he suddenly had his growth spurt, I would ward the girls off him too.

We were inseparable. Many sick-minded people at school would claim we were friends with benefits, as Edward always picked me up and drove me home. We would sometimes hold hands and hug, but that's how we'd always been, so I hadn't cared.

At senior prom, I went with Jacob Black, a bulky Native American from my home room. Edward went with Lauren, who could only have been described as a blond skinny bitch. We didn't approve of each other's dates at all.

During prom, I went to the bathroom to check my make-up with my best friends Alice and Rosalie. On the way back out, I spotted a couple making out in the dark hallway. The tallest figure had the bulkiest arms I had ever seen, and I curiously walked closer. That's when I realised it was Jake and Tanya.

That was the first time I slapped a guy across the face.

I had found Edward and told him, and we became each other's dates without the blink of an eye.

That was my first dance.

During the dance, Edward told me all of his feelings he had been feeling toward me since we met. Then he told me he loved me.

That was my first kiss.

We both got accepted into Dartmouth, and so when school finished we went apartment hunting. After much protesting of Carlisle and Charlie, but much encouragement of Renee and Esme, we found a two bedroom apartment a few minutes' walk from campus.

That was my first time.

Living together had its ups and its downs, we often joked about how we were acting like married couple. We fought, we loved, we even finished each other's sentences.

My two best friends from Forks had got accepted into Dartmouth in their second year of college, and promptly transferred from Seattle University to Dartmouth. Their apartment was seven minutes walk from ours.

I was the happiest I've ever been. I had a wonderful boyfriend, who was also my best friend, my other two friends lived nearby, and we were all going to an Ivy League College.

At the final year of College, during spring break, Edward had taken me on a vacation to Paris and Rome for two weeks. He told me he loved me, how he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, how he wanted to have children with me, and then got down on one knee.

Then we graduated, Edward with a degree from Dartmouth's medical school, and me with a Business degree specialised in Finance.

He went to work at a residency at the local hospital, while I went to a small accounting firm and made my way quickly to the top.

My life was perfect.

Too perfect.

It started with the nights out. He wouldn't be home for dinner. I was told to not wait up. Of course, I did. I sat in my bed, curled up, until I heard the distinct sound of his footsteps creaking on the floorboards and his door slamming shut.

We wouldn't go out together anymore. He used to parade me around on his arm, he was proud of me. He would show me off. He would love me.

Now everything was changing.

He would leave early in the morning. At 5am, he would get up, take a 10 minute shower in his bathroom, eat for 15 minutes while watching the morning news, gather his papers and laptop, and promptly leave at 5.30. I knew all this because of the countless sleepless nights I got from not sleeping next to him.

Sometimes, I would go a whole day without seeing him. He was my fiancé, for crying out loud! I thought his proposing meant he loved me; but maybe he just did it because he felt pressured by our families. We had been thrown together for anything and everything when we were younger, and this created our friendship. Our parents had no protests to us both moving in together when we got to Dartmouth. They faked surprise when he asked me to marry him. Our lives had been planned out, but I was happy with everything. Apparently he just wanted out.

Edward would claim that the residency he needed to complete was holding him back when I would question him about the long days. He would have a new research project. He had been paged in. His mentor needed him. Any excuse in the book, he had used it.

I wasn't sure whether all of this meant he didn't love me. After all the times he had told me he wanted to live forever with me, after all the times he'd said he loved me, after all the times we made sweet, slow love. After all the places he had taken me and shown me the beauty of them. After all the things he said to me.

So I was surprised when he came home earlier than usual one evening, telling me to get dressed adequately as he had a reservation at a restaurant around the corner from our apartment. Too say I was surprised would be an understatement. His face showed nothing. Not one emotion.

He opened the door of the apartment, and led me out, collecting two jackets on the way. We walked quietly and awkwardly to the restaurant. Every time I looked up at his face, his jaw was set and tense. His eyes never deviated from staring forward.

He held the chair out for me, and sat down himself. Throughout the whole dinner, neither of us spoke. It wasn't until I had finished my desert that he cleared his throat.

"Bella, I'm leaving."

I immediately stopped drinking from my glass and set it down, my eyes wide.

"What," I managed to choke out.

His eyes looked pained for a split-second, but then he regained his composure.

"I'm leaving. I'm going away. However you want to say it."

"You mean... just you?"

"Yes, Isabella," I flinched. He didn't use my full name unless we were having arguments.

"What about me?" My voice broke on the last word, I could feel my eyes watering up, and I tried telling myself I had nothing to worry about. Yet.

"I don't love you anymore," he said, his hard voice distinctly wrapping around every word. I'd never seen his eyes like this. They flashed dark with anger and hardness. He really meant it.

"Oh. That changes things," I said, my voice sounding amazingly calm. My insides were churning away though. I felt almost sick.

His voice shocked me out of my rambling, "It'll be like I never existed," he promised.

"No!" I shouted, standing up. I didn't care if the whole restaurant heard us; I needed to stop him from leaving.

"This is goodbye, Isabella," he said, his voice uncharacteristically hard again. He stood up, his face calm, and pushed his chair in. Chucking money on the table, he strided towards the glass doors, and powered through them. I couldn't move. I was frozen at the table, staring out the doors.

As soon as I found my legs again, I ran toward the doors, the man at the podium asking if I enjoyed the meal, and I should come back soon. Sure_, I'd come back soon_, I thought sarcastically. _My fiancé just left me here._

I ran down the steps and came to a halt. Where would he have gone? There was an alley to the left, and a street curving from my right ahead of me. I spent the next few hours looking around town for him, but when it started to rain, I gave up my search in case I got hypothermia.

I had a bad feeling when I opened the door to our – now my – apartment. As soon as I flicked the light on, I collapsed on the floor, crying. His piano was gone. That's all the confirmation I needed to know that he had been here and taken all of his belongings with him. Except for me.

I didn't know what happened the next few days. One moment I cried, the next I was asleep, then I was staring blankly at the ceiling. It was always a blur of the three. My phone rang dozens of times, but I ignored it. My mind was protecting itself by shutting down completely.

Ironically enough though, my mind didn't protect me from the nightmares I got. I frequently saw Edward's hard face as he told me he didn't love me anymore. I felt myself chasing after him, around the streets, until I couldn't remember anything about what I was supposed to be looking for. That was usually when my screaming woke me up.

A key turning in the lock of my door woke me from my blank staring, and my heart picked up hope. Had he come back for me? Was it all a lie?

"Bella, Bella, are you there? We're all worried about you. Are you all right?" A familiar voice asked. Alice wouldn't be able to see me lying in the corner, which was good. I wanted to be left here to rot away. I wanted to die.

A sobbing noise ripped out of me as I remembered Edwards face once again, and I felt someone kneel next to me.

"Bella, what happened to you!?" She said, outraged.

That's when it all became too much.

The next thing I know, I was lying in the white sheets of my bed, looking square into my best friends' worried faces. Alice pressed a cold wet cloth to my forehead, and I flinched at the contact. Rosalie grabbed my arms and hauled me into a sitting position, and then grabbed a glass of water from the bedside table.

"You're moving in with us, Bells." She said, no faltering in her tone. She must have been serious. No one argued with Alice.

"I am?" I managed to croak out.

"Yes, sweetie. We'll look after you."

The next few weeks were a flurry of activity, but for me everything was blurred. Rosalie and Alice had packed up all my belongings and put most of it into storage, while I lay motionless in bed. Either Alice or Rose stayed over every night, as at nights they woke me up from my nightmares. I wasn't really aware of my moving out till Alice was towing me toward the elevators of my building. I wanted to stay, but I couldn't find the energy to argue.

Alice had told me she had informed my job I was unwell to work, so I now had weeks of nothingness ahead of me. I hated being such a burden to Alice and Rosalie, as they had done everything for me. I was now a constant fixture in the spare bedroom of their apartment. I never went out.

It had been two months after _his_ departure before Alice told me her news.

"I got accepted for a job in LA today," she said softly, entering the room.

"Oh," was all I could say.

"Well... I was thinking you could come with me, you know. We could be flatmates, and you can find a good job there."

"I don't want to leave here, Alice." I said, my voice finding some strength.

"Bella," she sighed, "he's not coming back. You keep waiting for him, but there's been no contact, no letters, no phone calls, nothing. You should start a new chapter of your life. Let's move to LA, you get a new job, new atmosphere. You'll be fine. I'll be there every step of the way."

I couldn't find the strength to argue. My logical mind knew she was right, but my romantic and aching heart was telling me to stay here and wait. So I just nodded.

A month later, Alice and I had found an apartment by the beach in Santa Monica. Alice's job required her to be close to the rich and famous – since she was a make-up, hair and costume designer for movies.

We had sold both mine and theirs' apartments, as Rosalie had gone to Rochester to be closer to her extended family. We had shared an emotional goodbye, knowing we were going to be living on opposite sides of the country now. We had never been more than ten minutes drive apart, we'd always been able to burst into each other's places like we lived there ourselves.

I had applied for several jobs, and with Alice's help I had got one at a trading company as an accountant. I really hated starting so low, I would have liked something like a finance director, but I knew I needed to gain everybody's trust for any sort of promotion to happen.

Nothing was really that interesting being an accountant. All I did was add up numbers and write reports all day, but it required my concentration, so it stopped me from thinking about _him_.

Alice had met up with a guy from the product design department of my company. I would have been exited for her, but seeing her and her new boyfriend snuggled up on our couch when I got home really didn't brighten my day. Alice stopped bringing Jasper over then. She spent more nights there than she did at her own place. And that just left me alone, which was really worse than anything.

I had settled into my job well. My bosses knew how hard I worked, and after only three and a half months – to the disappointment of my greedy and bitchy co-workers – I had earned a promotion to work in the finance sector of our company as a budgeter. That job required even more reports on the analysis of the money going in and out, but it paid much better.

I was finally settling down to life in sunny LA, but nothing could keep the thoughts of Edward away.

Of course, just as I was trying to live a normal life, something had to happen.

Reporting on the money aspect of our company to all our departments was something that happened almost daily. Today, it was my job to tell Production that they had to "cut down on staff". If I could, I would just tell them they needed to fire half their crew.

I was about to knock on the Production Supervisors door when I saw what was happening on the other side of the pane of glass.

I felt a sharp twist of pain in my side, and it felt like every piece my broken heart was going to shatter into a million more pieces.

There was Edward, sitting back on his black leather chair. I knew the face he was giving. That was the face he had whenever he was on the verge of coming.

Looking down, I saw what was causing it.

The strawberry-blond curls of the bitchiest assistant in the company were bobbing up and down by Edward's crotch. The bitch was giving him a blowjob. And he was enjoying it.

I couldn't bring myself to look away. I knew I should be going, my I was hurting myself more with every second of this, but I couldn't look away.

Seeing that look of pure exhilaration on his face was heart-breaking. Knowing he was getting pleasure from someone else doing that to him, it felt worse than dying. I'd always hung onto the hope that maybe he still loved me, that he would think he had made a mistake and he would come back to fix it. Apparently not. He really meant what he said at that dinner.

He didn't love me anymore.

I felt a searing pain in my chest, but I ignored it. I knew I should turn away, I should go back to the apartment, but I couldn't tear myself away.

I saw him call out, probably loudly, but I wouldn't have known because of the sound-proof walls. The strawberry-blond looked up immediately and slapped him across the face. They looked like they were arguing and I decided I better leave before he saw me.

I felt rather faint as I approached the elevators, and by the time I got to the apartment, I felt num. The last thing I felt was hitting something hard and landing on the couch.

I woke up hours later, my neck and back feeling stiff from the couch. There was a blanket on me, so I figured that Alice had got home. I made breakfast for both of us, and just as I was pouring the tea, Alice came sluggishly into the kitchen, but she seemed to wake up properly when she saw me.

"Are you all right, Bella, you look like someone hit you with a shovel," she said, half-serious.

"Feels like that, too," I muttered.

"What?"

"No... nothing. I'm fine," I tried to make my face look acceptable as I said this, and gave Alice a small smile. Well, I hoped it came out as a smile.

Alice's frown got more pronounced, and a crinkle appeared between her eyes. She huffed and put her hands on her hips, and my eyes automatically widened. I knew what happened when she stood like that.

"Isabella Marie, I want you to explain every detail of what happened to you in the last twenty-four hours or so help me, I will burn your closet and restock it."

Alice had been a good supportive friend toward me in the last seven or so months, so I decided to tell her what happened at work.

"I saw Edward yesterday," I told her indifferently, chopping the bacon.

"No way!" She almost yelled at me.

I nodded, "Why would I joke about this, Ali?"

"Of course you wouldn't," she muttered, the crinkle coming back in her eyes. She chopped off a bit of butter and put it in a dirty pan next to the sink, not the one on the stove, clearly not concentrating.

"Wait!" She exclaimed, holding both of her hands up in the air like she was surrendering. I was both confused as to why she was telling me to wait when I was not going anywhere, and scared of the knife she was swinging round in her hand. It was now pointing straight at me, and I looked at it with wide eyes. Alice saw what I was staring at and threw it carelessly on the bench.

"Did you talk to him," she enquired, her eyes squinting at me.

"Err... no."

"Why not!?" She screeched. I almost laughed at the idea of talking to him while he was getting a blowjob, but then I remembered that the person giving him the blowjob was that bitch.

"Because Alice," I put down my knife and stared her in the eyes, "he was too busy with his assistant, who was giving him a blowjob."

You could have literally heard a pin drop. Alice's expression was shocked, and her mouth was hanging open like a gaping fish.

"That's what I thought," I muttered again.

"I'm gonna kill him," she vowed.

I never went near Productions again. The report that I was supposed to present I instead gave to the co-director. I made sure that people who required meetings with me now made advance appointments and I gave strict instructions to Angela, the secretary for this floor, to never let anyone in unless someone was dying.

Tuesday morning – a week and a half after the "incident" as I affectionately called it – an email came in. I hadn't seen that email address before, but I had seen the initials _ec_. I debated for a minute whether I should open it. Maybe this wasn't from who I was thinking it was anyway.

_Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars – points of light and reason... And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything._

I fought the tears that were threatening to roll down my cheeks. All I could think of at the moment was that I hoped Edward wrote this, and not James, the creepy guy in the office down the corridor.

The next morning, I found a dozen assorted roses wrapped up in cellophane on my desk. I immediately went online to find out the meanings of pink and red roses, but I had a nagging feeling at the back of my head that I already know.

_A mixture of pink and red roses signifies a romantic relationship. 12 red roses conveys "Be mine" and "I love you"._

Over the next few days, I received more flowers, and every time I looked up the meaning it had something to do with love or friendship. I had no idea whether it came from Edward or whether it someone playing an expensive prank on me.

The flowers of this morning came with a plain white card attached.

_I'm only afraid of losing you. Love, your Edward._

That one made me break down, and soon Angela came to check on me. I asked if I could go home, and I took the card with me. I was hoping to catch Alice, she hadn't had any major projects on her hands the last few weeks.

When I came in, I shouted for Alice. She came running out of the hallway, dressed in nothing but a towel, her face worried as she assessed me for any of my common injuries.

I commanded her to go back and change, and then asked her nicely to join me on the sofa, as I had something to show her.

I showed her the email I had printed out, bunches of flowers I had kept in my car, and last of all, the card. Alice read through everything with wide eyes, scanning the email quickly, and then reading it more slowly again. A smile was creeping its way on her face.

By the time she'd finished reading and looking at the flowers, she looked up at me, and grinned widely.

"This is great, Bells!" She shouted, tears flowing out of her eyes, "just a sec, stay right there," she commanded, holding her hand in front of her as if I were a dog.

I could hear her rushing into the kitchen and back again. She shoved an ivory envelope in my face, with my name written in familiar handwriting. I opened the expensive letter carefully.

_Bella, I love you. I have always loved you, and I will always love you. I was thinking of you, seeing your face in my mind, every second that I was away. When I told you that I didn't love you, it was the very blackest kind of blasphemy._

I looked up at my best friend, who was watching my expression carefully.

"Did _he_ give you this letter?" She nodded _yes_, then snatched the letter and read it herself. Her expression turned into one of horror.

"He told you he didn't love you anymore?" She whispered. I nodded in reply, and I could feel more tears streaming down my cheeks. Alice threw aside the letter and practically jumped on me hugging me fiercely, trying to keep me together.

"Come on," she tugged my hand and led me to my bedroom, where she pushed aside the covers and pushed me in. She came back a couple of minutes later with a cup of steaming hot cocoa in her hands.

"Drink this, sweetie," she gave me the cup and lay down next to me.

I could hear the sliding of glass and wood, and cursing coming from a male voice. I realised I had my eyes closed, and opened them to my now dark bedroom. Alice was no longer next to me, so I gathered I must have fallen asleep.

I could see a distinct shape hover by the window, the silhouette of his body clearly marked out by the moonlight outside.

"Bella, it's just me... Can I please talk to you?" Edward whispered.

I nodded, but when he didn't move I remembered it was dark so he wouldn't have been able to see me. I whispered a faint _yes_.

He came closer, but tripped over the rug, and nearly fell flat on the floor, but he caught himself on the edge of the bed.

"You should probably know that I'm breaking the rules right now. Well, not technically, since she said I was never to walk through your door again, and I came in the window… But, still, the intent was clear," he whispered, kneeling down on the floor by my pillow.

Not letting me get a word in, he continued, "After all the thousand times I've told you I love you, how could you let one word break your faith in me?"

I felt the tears appear in my eyes.

"I could see it in your eyes, that you honestly _believed_ that I didn't want you anymore. The most absurd, ridiculous concept—as if there were any way that _I_ could exist without needing _you_!"

"I'm sorry," was all I could whisper.

"What do you have to be sorry about, Bella? I left you hanging without a word, I tell you I don't love you, I take your heart, your love, and I just rip them up, into tiny little pieces, and throw them back at you. I am the most inexcusable excuse for a friend, for a lover, ever."

"Why did you leave?"

He considered for a moment before he started, "I could see what I was doing to you, giving you no chance to actually love. I thought that you felt pressured to get into a relationship with me, that you told me you'd marry me because you felt obliged to. I felt that I was robbing you of the chance of finding your soul mate, because I was always in the way."

"I've always loved you," I started, my voice so low I wasn't sure if he would actually hear, "you are my soul mate, in so many different ways. You're my best friend, and we love each other like crazy, and I will never dare to find someone different. You're perfect. I love you, now and always."

His mouth was on mine then, and I couldn't fight him. My will crumbled into dust the second our lips met.

"Only _you_ could be more important than what I wanted… what I needed. What I want and need is to be with you, and I know I'll never be strong enough to leave again. I have too many excuses to stay—thank heaven for that!" He rejoiced.

"Come here," I whispered, opening my arms to him. He climbed to my side in the bed, and snuggled with me as close as humanly possible.

"It feels incredible, being you so close again," he whispered.

The next morning, I woke up to emerald eyes staring into mine.

"I want to stay here all day," I whispered, tugging him closer.

I didn't get to hear his reply, because I heard my bedroom door open. We both shot into a shot into a sitting position like teenagers caught by their parents.

"Edward!" Alice hissed, her eyes flashing with anger again, "get out of my apartment!"

"Alice, it's my apartment too," I sat in front of Edward protectively.

"What is _he_ doing here, Bella? Explain, now!" She shouted, trying to get past me so she could grab Edward – and probably haul him out of the window.

"I came to apologise for my behaviour of the past months, Alice," Edward interrupted what I was about to say.

Alice looked between the two of us a dozen times, before deciding to address me, "so you're going to accept one apology for the months of grief he's put you through?" She enquired, throwing her hands in the air. That was the early warning sign of Alice getting stressed, so I got out of the bed and took her hand.

"It was a complete misunderstanding, Ali. He's back now, and that's important. We've both made mistakes, and he apologised, so we're going to move on with this and see where it takes us, okay?" I asked her softly.

She crossed her arms and tapped her foot against the floor, one of her eyebrows raised, evaluating both mine and Edwards expressions.

"You have a lot of explaining to do, young man," she huffed at Edward, and marched through the bedroom door. I stayed quiet, and heard a kitchen cupboard open before I turned back to Edward.

"Sorry about that," I whispered.

"No, she should be worried. What I did was awful, and I can't begin to think what you went through. She's just looking out for you. I am so sorry for every–"

I cut him off by pressing my lips to his, silencing him. As soon as I had to stop because of the need of oxygen, I smiled at him, and he smiled back in understanding.

We spent the next few hours having a lengthy breakfast with a reserved Alice, where everything was explained fully. At one point, Alice was angry that her reasoning was bringing her no-where, and after a minute of silence, she broke out an evil grin. I sat back in my chair quickly.

"Why were you getting a blowjob from a blond bitch two weeks ago?" Alice enquired sweetly, raising her eyebrow in a challenge.

Edward looked scared and enquired how we knew about that, and I told him about me seeing him in his office. With a bitch attached to his dick.

"I was remembering your mouth on me," he whispered, looking into my eyes. Alice gagged beside us, but I shushed her by giving her an evil stare.

"Tanya offered, and I couldn't bother to decline. At the end I shouted your name, so Tanya got angry with me."

"So that's why she slapped you," I smirked, all the tension in the room forgotten. Alice looked like she didn't believe him, but she wasn't there. I didn't care, anyway. I had him here, now, and no one else did.

That evening, Edward took me out for dinner for the first time in seven months. He was wearing a beautiful suit and tie, and me a metallic blue dress. Then we saw _La Traviata _afterwards, basking in the sounds of the opera.

He was leading me down Santa Monica beach in our bare feet. We sat down close to the waves, not caring about our clothes, and leaned on each other. We didn't need words.

He placed something in my lap, and I looked down to see a small dark-red, velvet box. I looked up at him, and his eyes were shining with love. I opened it and saw the most beautiful silver ring, set in with three diamonds, and the middle one blue. My breath rushed out of me as I inspected it.

"It was my grandmothers," he whispered, his voice breaking into the stillness that had surrounded us. I nodded, and he knew I wasn't answering this statement, but his earlier question.

He grabbed the ring and gently grabbed my left hand and put it on my middle finger. He gazed lovingly into my eyes, and I reached up to stroke his beautiful face, and kissed his lips slowly. He kissed the happy tears off my cheeks, kissed my face everywhere. This moment was now the happiest moment of my life.

He didn't need to give me a speech about how much he loved me, I already knew that. Edward and I weren't like that. We didn't need long speeches; we just needed each other, forever.

* * *

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**Roses **www(dot)wisegeek(dot)com/what-do-different-colors-of-roses-mean**  
Flower Meanings **www(dot)aboutflowers(dot)com/flower-a-plant-information-and-photos/meanings-of-flowers**  
Twilight Quotes **www(dot)twilight-quotes(dot)com

**Dress, suit, and ring are all on my profile.**


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